Mike Watts

Hi, my name is Mike Watts. Over the past couple of years, I have taken my passion of being an entrepreneur to a new level. At the age of 26, I was well educated but without a job. Then I read a book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kioysaki, and this book changed my life in ways I never thought possible. Before I dive into what I have done over the past couple of years, I want to show you how I ended up here.....

Where Did It All Start?

I was raised in Valparaiso, IN, about a hour east of Chicago. I grew up in a family of five: Dad, Bill, who is a Safety Manger for BP for the past 30+ years and my Mom, Michele, is an Audiologist. I have a sister, Katie, who is an Occupational Therapist in Indianapolis, IN and brother, Daniel, who is living in Nevada and he is a Conservation crew supervisor leading environmental restoration projects. My parents worked hard to take care of their children so we could have the best possible life growing up. We vacationed across the country, we were put in the best possible situations for success and my parents worked hard to eliminate all of our bills for us so we could start with a fresh start. All three of us were involved in sports and activities, and my parents wanted us to participate in as much as possible, so it was a pretty busy childhood.

While I was growing up, I was pretty quiet but I had a large group of friends and was active in the community. I was not a leader but more of a follower. I was one of those guys who thought he was a leader, but looking back on the situation now, I just ran with the crowd and did what they did. I figured out in college that I needed to develop leadership abilities to lead me further in life.

Who is Mike Today?

I started working in 6th grade delivering papers around the neighborhood, which I continued for five years. This job was my first experience working, which lead to an intense work ethics I inherited from my parents. My senior year in college I was working three jobs to pay the bills and put extra money in my pocket. That year was crazy because most of my friends were on the easy road for their final year.

I have been all over the board when it comes to jobs: paperboy, grocery store cart-pusher, food cook, workout gym rep, manufacturing, and door-to-door salesman. I am willing to try anything at least once because I figured out with each job; I was learning a new skill.

When I attended Purdue University for college, and I graduated with a dual degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology and Organizational Leadership and Supervision.

I grew up in a house with the mindset to find a company that I could work for the next 30 years, work with benefits, and receive a generous retirement package. That was the goal upon graduation. During college I started two small businesses and discovered this passion for running my own show. I decided running my own business was the way to go. Then came graduation and my first post-collegiate job. I was pretty much broke at the time and my small businesses were in the beginning stages. I decided it was time to make some “REAL” money so I took a job in Charlotte, NC. After five years at Purdue I packed my bags and started a new journey working for Philip Morris USA.

Once I arrived in NC, I made what everyone told me to do was buy my first house. I bought my FIRST house at the age of 23 for $155,100. Then I sold it 3.5 years later for $155,000 and ended up paying $6,500 out of pocket to sell my house. As I grew up this was another one of those money making activities everyone told me to do. Well that didn't work......

Philip Morris USA is one of those solid companies that will be around for the next 30 years, with great benefits, great pay, and the OUTSTANDING retirement packages. There was a gentleman by the name of Kenneth McQueen who took me under his wing and taught me the ins and outs of the business and how to work with the employees. This advice saved me while I was starting out because I had quite an attitude that needed to be put into check and. He was my mentor while I was working at the plant and we still discuss life to this day. It took me about a year before I really understood the structure and the functions of the business. This position was a learning experience I had to go through to figure out my purpose in the organization.

I started at a great salary right out of college, and my first full year I made $93,000. The second year I made $92,000 plus I had a 401K around $47,000. I was really setting myself up great, but then two years into my employment the CEO stopped at the plant one day and announced they were shutting my plant down within the next three years.

Talking about a wrinkle in the plan of life, plus I just started my MBA at Wake Forest University. I was working on a $61,000 degree and I was losing my job. I was called into the office in December of 2008 and I was told in February 2009 I will no longer have a position in the company. This was the biggest life changing experience I have gone through.

Working at Philip Morris taught me something I will never forget: Make sure you LISTEN to the people you are working with to get each task completed. I was a 23 year old guy working with people who were 30-40 years older than me and it was quite a smack in the face when I walked in the plant. My job was to run a manufacturing bay and this was the first time I was in charge of people that were my parent’s age and this was a life changing experience.

Losing my job was a great stepping stone in my life because it gave me a chance to prepare myself to start my own business a couple months prior to losing my job. I noticed many people at the plant had the mindset that the corporate management were going to realize they made a mistake by shutting down the wrong plant and make an announcement to keep the plant open (The plant in NC was the top performing plant and sometimes they shut-down the best). I started to prepare for the lay-off which was the opposite of what most people thought.. This is when I read Rich Dad book's and they changed the direction of my future. I decided it was time to start my own business.

I was researching businesses, talking to people who were running a business, and changing my mind-set assisting me in the direction I wanted to take my life. I decided the time was now to take action and this was just what I did. I went through a number of struggles and failures in the first year but they were well worth it. I knew it would take some time to figure everything out just like I had to do at Philip Morris.

My mentor, Jason, was in Florida, I sold my house, finished up my MBA and relocated to Tampa, FL at the end of the 2009.

Over the next six months, I was learning how to host live trainings on the internet, organizing events in the local area, and training my team in the Tampa area. We hosted trainings on Ustream as you can see below, we pack the live events with up to 250 people in the room and 700+ on the internet, and this taught me leadership in my business.

This move was a great learning experience and much different from my job at Philip Morris because I discovered running your own business puts 100% responsibility in my lap. When someone works at a job, a certain mindset is developed and a person will experience a mindset transformation we starting a business. Once they take the ownership, the rest is just about being consistent with their time and effort in the business to make it happen.

Around May 2010, I came across information regarding Internet Marketing. Keep in mind, I did not have a clue how Internet marketing worked or even what a blog was, or paid advertising, or how to use Facebook to build my business. I decided that I needed to learn the power of internet marketing and how I could use it to build my business. I invested a few hundreds of dollars for material written by Jonathan Budd.

I bought a couple of domain names, started a blog, started a website, and started to shoot a couple of videos. I was able to generate my first leads, and I earned my first couple hundred dollars in the first couple of months. I learned the following skills: blogging, PPC, video marketing, article marketing, forum marketing, and I even taught myself a little HTML programming. Are these skills every person needs to know to build a business? I told myself I wanted to generate my own leads and utilize the power of the Internet then I knew I had to teach myself the information.

There was one downside of learning all of this knowledge, I found myself in LA-LA Land trying to learn everything. I was not perfecting anything, but rather I was learning the basics of everything. I decided it was time to learn from some people who have build successful business utilizing these same principles.

I decided I was ready to make another change in my business and in August of 2010, I left Tampa and moved to Phoenix, AZ to run a business with my buddy, Eric. We went to college together and decided it was time to meet back up and join together in business.

In September, I attended two different conferences that changed my outlook on everything I was doing at the time. They were hosted by Jonathan Budd and Eben Pagan. These two conferences took all of the basic knowledge I had achieved over the past year and allowed me to put a game-plan in place to move everything forward.

I changed all of my marketing, my advertising, the way I was shooting videos, and so much more. I came back prepared and ready to take action. I discovered the power of YouTube, Facebook, writing articles, posting in forums, writing a blog, and a couple of other sources. When I started to learn the power of testing and consistency. I realized over the past couple of years that running a business is all about consistent testing and action. If you take these steps, you will see results.

Where is Mike Heading?

Over the past couple of years, I discovered there is a huge difference between formal and informal education. The skills I have developed in my informal education surpass my formal education any day of the week. I have found the main reason a person goes back to school is to further there education and develop more skills. We are in the information age and the education is at our fingertips.

I have spent the past couple of years, investing in the most profitable education that is on this planet and I want to share it with others. Not everyone in the world is able to attend the events, or spend the money that I have over the past couple of years and that is why I have put this 8-Day Training series together for you. This series has a value of $297 and it can be yours absolutely FREE.